


I Could Show You Love, You Could Be My Luck

by whatdidyouexpect (youdbetterbeready)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Canon - Anime Dub, Capital Cities, Future avengers, Light Bondage, M/M, Magical Artifacts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22885312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youdbetterbeready/pseuds/whatdidyouexpect
Summary: Loki is Thor's responsibility, one which he does not take lightly.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel), Loki/Thor
Kudos: 17





	I Could Show You Love, You Could Be My Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [patientalien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/patientalien/gifts).



> I recently scoured several episodes of the Future Avengers anime, as well as its predecessor, Disk Wars, for Thorki content. In particular, episode 1x19 and 20 of FA deliver pretty heartily. This contains allusions to various spoilers for the series if you haven't seen it. A dub of the first season is slated to air on Disney+ at the end of February 2020, and uh, Kiss Anime exists too, cough cough. Song lyrics in the title and throughout the story are lazily ripped from "Safe and Sound" by Capital Cities.

I could lift you up/ I could show you what you want to see / and take you where you want to be

He had failed to keep Loki safe during their childhood: From their father's judgment and the harsh realities and responsibilities of palace life; from the creeping doubt, self-originated and otherwise, that he could hold his own as a Prince of Asgard; and from Thor himself, in all of his blustering, oafish, overwrought, golden glory. Loki had repaid his oversight with revenge a hundred times over, with a sliding scale scorecard of mischief to mayhem to maliciousness to show for it. These latter exploits often landed Loki in their father's prison, sometimes, it seemed, as a precaution against whatever inevitable trick Loki had up his sleeve for the next time. Mortals like to say that a person is innocent until proven guilty, but with Loki, it is but a survival skill to remain doubtful of his innocence.

Loki often chafes at his punishments, almost offended by the banality of being tossed back into his usual cell in the dungeons below his father's throne for his crimes. Thor, meanwhile, tends to chafe at the myriad responsibilities heaped upon him as the heir-apparent to their father's kingdom, and rebels in his own way, allowing Midgard's own banalities to monopolize his time. Perhaps Odin even intentionally shoulders Thor with dealing with so many of Loki's dealings as his own punishment for not remaining dutifully on Asgard. Regardless, Loki both appears to exalt in and bristle at Thor's involvement in his various corrections, enough that Thor suspects that his brother acts up strategically to keep him at his side, a more effective means of binding Thor to Asgard than Odin could ever conceive of (possibly). 

I could fill your cup / you know my river won't evaporate / this world we still appreciate

Loki likes the manacles, the way they're almost deceptively lightweight, yet intricate, how they've been bespelled by Thor, enchanted by the Thunder God with the express purpose of binding him. It's a bit of a lie (whiter than the majority of the half-truths that come out of his mouth, honestly) that remaining tethered by the chains was only ever for show. In reality, only by tricking Thor into allowing Loki to harness some of his mythical lightning into a codex for his leg of the Emerald Rain Project was he then able to magic them away. 

Even so, Thor only reacts with the barest hint of surprise when they make an appearance later on, dangled by a single crooked finger in front of his face. "I should shackle and leave you here," Thor growls, but Loki grins when he snatches them anyways, apparently willing to roll the dice. Once laid out down the length of Thor's mattress, wrists cuffed snugly together and fastened with only minimal additional effort to a space along Thor's massive headboard, the threat of abandonment becomes quite a bit less serious, and Loki knows it. "Am I your most prized possession, brother?" He makes a show of writhing and batting his eyes, and smiles up at Thor with all of his teeth. 

"You are my biggest burden," Thor counters grumpily. Nonetheless, Loki is there, really there, and their foreheads meet. "Why must you behave in such a ridiculous manner? You are no fool, Loki, regardless of how well you play the part."

Loki's response is breathy. "I'm a beast of burden," he purrs, back arching into Thor's reluctant touch. "To tether me to you is to tame me."

"If only I did not have to expend so much effort to contain you in the first place." Thor sighs against Loki's mouth, finding, for once, that his brother is not fighting against him at all.

In a tidal wave of mystery / you'll still be standing next to me

Self-preservation often keeps him from delving too far into the morass of past hurts and frustrations regarding his brother. If anything, The Leader's recent mental trickery made it apparent to him that to love Loki unconditionally was to compartmentalize his catalog of betrayals, lest the dissonance between the complementary halves of his brother drive him completely insane.

Still, such thoughts come unbidden to him on occasion, often in latent hours following a long day, in fleeting moments between decompression and exhaustion when his defenses are down. He remembers, before he can remind himself to push it back, the wall of despair he had felt when his brother's slight frame became dead weight in his arms; then, somehow, the even worse pain of realizing that it had all (as much as Loki's fly-by-night plotting could be cobbled together) been a trick, a cruel deception, a means to an end that, in the end, Loki did not even care about enough to see through to its intended conclusion. Thor cannot help but conclude that this means Loki has neither the capacity nor the interest in treating his heart as anything more than a convenient bauble to be plucked up at will and then flippantly shattered when it is no longer useful, and it hurts.

There are older hurts as well, of course: Embittered arguments from either side about duty and family; times when Loki had thrown the differences in their parentage in his face. All of it twists together until everything becomes mangled and sharp enough to tear him to shreds from the inside out. Thor sometimes even thinks he might welcome it. And yet, his capacity for love is usually enough to keep such thoughts at bay. He knows they yet exist, biding their time in the dark, watching him with bemusement and disbelief, calculating when next to strike. They are not unlike Loki himself in that manner, and so Thor learns to love them, too, in spite of himself and everything else Loki will do and say which threaten to break his heart, at last, beyond repair.

Even if the sky is falling down / even in a hurricane of frowns / even if we're six feet underground / I know that we'll be safe and sound 

To protect Loki is to let him go, to watch him take flight and hope he doesn't lose himself before he can find his way home again. Keeping Loki safe means anticipating when his brother needs his help, and then pretending not to notice, lest he flee again. 

He worries, in those weak moments, whether Loki's happiness must come at the expense of his own. Despite his best efforts, he finds himself occasionally envious of the bond Makoto and Bruno share, the mutual understanding and appreciation that seems to grow with each shared mission. Thor worries whether, despite having pulled Loki back from the brink so many times, he is yet too far gone to enact lasting change. In the crevices of the darkest parts of his mind, Thor wonders why their own brotherly bond isn't sufficient to save Loki's soul, and then he crushes the thought, hammers it to oblivion with a single, precise swing of the Mjolnir in his mind, before it has a chance to take root and destroy them both. 

Then, he will locate Loki, wherever he is at that particular moment, and uproot any tendrils of darkness that threaten to tether his brother, to choke off the light and love and magic and goodness that Thor knows to be there. It is his responsibility to keep Loki safe and sound, even occasionally from himself, and Thor vows to spend eternity smiting Loki's demons, making up for lost time, loving his brother fiercely for everything that he is and could be, and hopes that when all is said and done, it will be enough.


End file.
